Yóuxīn ānlè dào 遊心安樂道
The Way of the Mind that Wanders to the Pure Land of Peace and Bliss by 元曉 (Wŏnhyo, 撰)
About the work
A short single-juǎn doctrinal treatise on Pure Land devotion by the Silla Buddhist master 元曉 Wŏnhyo (Korean: 元曉 Wǒnhyo 617–686), the principal philosophical founder of Korean Buddhism. The text — sometimes called the Ānlè dào for short — sets out a seven-fold doctrinal frame for Pure Land devotion: (1) the doctrinal rationale (shù jiào qǐ zōngzhì 述教起宗致); (2) the location of the Pure Land (dìng bǐtǔ suǒzài 定彼土所在); (3) the resolution of doubts and difficulties (míng yíhuò huànnán 明疑惑患難); (4) the conditions for rebirth (xiǎn wǎngshēng yīnyuán 顯往生因緣); (5) the typology of grades of rebirth (chū wǎngshēng pǐnshù 出往生品數); (6) the relative ease and difficulty of rebirth (lùn wǎngshēng nányì 論往生難易); and (7) further raising and resolution of doubts (zuò yí fù chú yí 作疑復除疑).
Abstract
The Yóuxīn ānlè dào is one of Wŏnhyo’s three principal Pure Land works, alongside the Wúliángshòu jīng zōngyào 無量壽經宗要 (T1747B) and the Wúliángshòu jīng sījì 無量壽經私記 (now lost). Wŏnhyo’s distinctive doctrinal contribution to Pure Land thought is the application of his characteristic huòzhèng 和諍 (“harmonising disputes”) method — the systematic mediation between apparently opposed doctrinal positions — to the questions raised by Pure Land devotion. Where Tang-Chinese Pure Land masters (Dàochuò, Shàndǎo) tend to treat Pure Land as a distinct doctrinal-soteriological path requiring its own systematic articulation, Wŏnhyo treats it as one expression of the universal doctrinal framework set out in his Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn shū commentary on the Awakening of Faith — the yī xīn èr mén 一心二門 (“one mind, two gates”) doctrine of xīn zhēnrú mén 心真如門 (gate of the mind as suchness) and xīn shēngmiè mén 心生滅門 (gate of the mind as arising-and-perishing).
The work’s distinctive treatment of question (3) — the resolution of doubts — and question (7) — the recursive zuò yí fù chú yí — exemplifies the huòzhèng method: each apparent doctrinal difficulty is unfolded into its constituent positions and the underlying compatibility identified. This synthetic-philosophical approach distinguishes Wŏnhyo’s Pure Land treatise sharply from the more polemical Tang-Chinese tradition.
The text is preserved in the Taishō (T47N1965), the Korean canon, and an early Japanese woodblock recension. It was widely transmitted to Japan during the Hossō and Kegon transmissions and remains one of the principal sources for the Japanese reception of Wŏnhyo. Dating bracket: Wŏnhyo’s mature period, c. 660–686.
Translations and research
- Park Sung-bae 朴性培. Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment. Albany: SUNY Press, 1983 — for Wŏnhyo’s general doctrinal framework.
- Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-sūtra, a Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton UP, 1989.
- Muller, A. Charles, et al. Wŏnhyo: Selected Works. Collected Works of Korean Buddhism vol. 1. Seoul: Jogye Order, 2012 — includes English translation of the Yóu-xīn ān-lè dào.